In spite of our overwhelming grief, we didn't have a lot of time. With my "advanced maternal age" in mind I was anxious to get started with a frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycle. We had five frozen embryos, frozen at day 3 and all had gotten the top rating of A with no fragmentation.
My reproductive endocrinologist (RE) prefers to do natural cycle FETs -- meaning that I wouldn't take any meds at all. No estrogen, no progesterone, nothing.
Instead, I would monitor for ovulation with ovulation predictor test kits (OPKs). I would pee on a stick (POAS) twice a day. The first time would be at around 10 in the morning and the second time at around 8 in the evening. My IVF coordinator said that they tested twice a day so as not to miss the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge. The time of day of the detection would not affect the time of transfer.
It was a controversial choice in our RE practice, but we decided that if all five embryos survived the thaw then that was how many we would transfer. Our doctor agreed with the decision, but another doctor and the IVF coordinator were troubled by it. My logic went like this: of our two pregnancies, we knew that one had chromosomal problems for sure. The other one, with those low beta numbers was likely to have had chromosomal problems too. And all the genetic counselors I spoke with said that at my age more than half of my embryos would be likely to have such problems.
(The reason why more of these don't show up is that they are miscarried before the problem is detected. That is why it is harder for someone of "advanced maternal age" to carry a pregnancy to term or even past the first trimester.)
I was monitored with a few ultrasounds over the course of the my natural FET cycle. The last ultrasound was performed after the surge was detected and that was done to ensure that ovulation had actually occurred.
The transfer was scheduled for 4 days past ovulation (DPO).
Here's an annoying thing. When you get to the facility, they don't tell you right away how many of your embryos survived the thaw. First you have to get undressed and put on the hospital gown and get your blood pressure taken and answer the nurse's questions and wait and wait and wait as you watch other patients be wheeled out for their procedures and come back again. You can see the doc across the room, but they are too busy with other things to have a serious conversation with you. Yet.
My nurse on that day seemed as if she was 127 years old, and I felt like I should be helping her into the bed rather than the other way around. We made small talk about the color of the hospital socks. For my IVF egg retrieval and transfer I'd been given pairs of khaki-greenish socks with the rubber treads on the bottom to prevent slipping on the industrial floors. But the day of my FET I got electric blue socks. Very exciting.
Since my IVF, about 7 months earlier, my RE practice had moved its retrieval and transfer facility from a local hospital to its own brand new dedicated IVF facility, just down the hall from the RE's new offices. I was the fourth patient ever to have a transfer done there as they had only opened the new facility a few days before.
My RE had told me at the beginning of the cycle that the clinic had a thaw rate -- a survival rate for thawed embryos -- of about 50 percent. Online friends had better rates than that, so I was optimistic.
After waiting what seemed like an eternity, the doctor (not my regular one -- they all switched off on who performed procedures according to the day) and the embryologist came over to tell me how the actual thaw had gone. The results were disappointing.
Only one embryo had really survived, although on the form it said two had survived. One was still 8-celled and in good shape. The other had only 2 remaining cells of its original 8. None of the others had survived.
So they wheeled me into the transfer room for a procedure that I was convinced would never work. We'd been through so much disappointment and grief already. We got to look through the microscope (as we had during the IVF transfer) at our two little embryos.
Then I got on the table for the procedure.